


Britishisms

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Stargate SG-1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-12-20
Updated: 2003-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:49:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1632413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack tries to track down a subconscious connection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Britishisms

**Author's Note:**

> Written for helvirago

 

 

Disclaimer: Not mine. Left in helvirago's stocking for the holidays. Note: I've never written for this fandom before, so as I tried to write, I found myself thinking, 'Okay, how do I get into the slash mindset for Jack and Daniel?' Then I started wondering, 'Well, how would Jack get into the slash mindset for Jack and Daniel?' Then somehow, my pre-story thinking turned into the story. I've put in a few things I always thought should have been there (which is, after all, what fanfic is all about), and tried to rethink a few things that always bugged me (see prior parentheses). Any mistakes are mine and mine alone- I wrote this on the wire, and it's extremely unbetaed. Feedback is greatly appreciated. Happy Holidays- enjoy! 

Britishisms 

Daniel was a git. 

And an idiot, subspecies blithering. And possibly a poltroon, although to Jack that always sounded like a heavy-duty rain boot. 'Don't go out without your poltroons on- you'll catch your death of cold.' 

He'd done something stupid again- something besides strand them on a world made mostly of grit and sun, not knowing if or when they'd ever find their way back; something besides calmly approach an unknown and possibly dangerous animal, armed with nothing but his belief that every creature on earth understood the words 'good boy.' 

From a personal standpoint, Jack didn't care much about Daniel dragging them along on his little fun-fact trip. Or his Crocodile Dundee impersonation. From a tactical standpoint it made him furious. He didn't know why Kowalski wasn't riding Daniel harder about the latest idiocy. He'd been angry enough in the beginning. Then again, Kowalski and the rest of the team had different motives for coming than Jack did. 

So Daniel'd done something stupid. And the only thing Jack could think, staring across at Daniel's hair flopping in and out of his glasses as he energetically explained why, if you took into account two books that had been written a thousand years ago and a few scratchy marks on a boulder, it really hadn't been stupid at all, was that Daniel- was a git. 

And there he went again. Why did Daniel make him think in British? Sometimes he sounded like he'd swallowed the collected works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. And he knew for a fact he'd never normally think in terms like 'damned fool.' 

And he could not figure out where it was coming from. 

An unruly subconscious was one of the hazards of being a soldier. He'd known men who cried every time they ate a Snickers bar, and kept buying them by the box. Another who started off every engagement reciting snatches of Gilbert and Sullivan, fitting the patter to the gunfire. It was an inevitable side effect of keeping the conscious mind under tight control: the wigginess, as his last baby lieutenant had put it, had to go somewhere. 

Still, there had to be something sparking this off. Some reason, even if only a small one. And if he could just work it out, maybe he could get it to stop before he ended up punctuating all his sentences with 'Great Scott!'s. 

Was it the unworldliness? The naivete that sometimes made Daniel seem effete? Certainly there was a trend to see English men that way. He'd even known some of that type. Well, on the surface, anyway. One, a member of the Special Forces, looked like a butler for a declining dukedom until he pulled out his garrotte wires. His own team called him 'The God of Death,' and mostly they weren't joking. He imagined Daniel with Walter's accessories. He'd probably play cat's cradle, and knot them beyond all unwinding. 

Still, that was thin reasoning. He'd known others who'd grown up less than a mile from Walter, gruff and grim and likely to break a teacup if they tried to hold it right. He didn't think his subconscious was that simple. 

Was it the archaeologist thing, then? Somewhere in the back of his head, did he kit Daniel out with a pith hat and a mouth full of 'jolly good'? Maybe a pair of muttonchops and a silverheaded cane? He'd never had much experience with archaeologists before this project. And he did tend to associate Daniel with Catherine, who even in budget meetings carried that old-world style around with her like a parasol or a summer shawl. 

'But you didn't find anything?' Kowalski asked Daniel, poking at the fire. 

'No, but I could have. Obviously, there was some structural instability, which is why the inner chambers had collapsed, but according to Lepticus some artifacts were occasionally left in the outer chambers, kind of like peace offerings. Thieves were given something to leave with and warned strenuously about pushing their luck any further.' 

'What, like offering a mugger all your cash if he'll leave your cards alone?' 

'Something like that.' 

Kowalski brought out the evening's meal. 'Ever considered there's a reason this civilization died out?' 

'Actually, it's a very practical custom. It acknowledges the realities of grave-robbing, and it makes allowances for them. Very carrot-and-stick.' 

'I wouldn't describe a guy who buries all his belongings with himself, thinking he can keep on using them, as practical.' 

'Yes, but they wouldn't think we were very clever either.' 

Kowalski looked blank. 'Yeah, but what does that matter? We're right.' 

Daniel raised his eyebrows, then obviously decided not to pursue it any further. 'So you see,' he stressed, looking at Jack, 'there really wasn't any reason to suspect pits full of crocodiles or giant boulders.' 

A small bomb of unnamed feelings went off in Jack's stomach. Before he said something really angry, Skaara came running up. 

'O'Neill! On time for food?' 

Jack gestured at the campfire, not mentioning that Skaara had their mealtimes down pat. Kowalski held up the extra bowl he'd brought out. 

As they ate, Skaara darted glances between Jack and Daniel. 'Angry,' he said. 

'Not angry,' Jack corrected. 'Commonsensical. If you feel like risking your neck, at least do it for something worthwhile, not a bunch of pebbles.' 

That one flew right over Skaara's head. He thought for a moment, then smiled. 'Is all right,' he said. 'I understand. You are angry at son.' 

Jack felt his face freeze, a reflex from the days right after Charlie's death, when just hearing his name had been enough to make him need to hide inside himself. He consciously tried to relax. 'Son?' 

'Yes. I figure it out. Jack of Neill, Daniel Jack's-son. Don't be angry that he is not a mighty warrior. There are- other things, yes?' 

Looking at Kowalski's face, Jack realized he'd have to put quite a few surprises in his sleeping-bag before he stopped hearing about this one. While he tried to explain, Daniel kept writing in one of his innumerable notebooks. 

'You speak the language,' Jack said, frustrated. 'Feel like helping out here?' 

Daniel looked up and babbled something off. Skaara gave Jack a long wondering look. Daniel returned to his book. 

Jack stared. 

'What?' 

'What did you say to him?' 

'I told him all the soldiers on our world were eunuchs,' Daniel said. 'It seemed easier than going into the differences between patronymic and non-patronymic societies.' 

Jack set his mouth in a thin line. 

'All right, I said my father was a different Jack.' 

Daniel kept writing through the evening chores, popular opinion being that it was safer for the world that way. Jack tried to keep his mind focused on what he was doing, but somehow his thoughts kept circling back around to the same subject. 

He didn't see any similarities between Daniel and Charlie. For that matter, he barely saw any between Charlie and Skaara, except for a wide smile and an unfortunate gravitation towards shiny metal objects. There couldn't be any. Charlie had never had the chance to grow up and find real interests or a real personality. 

There was no substitute for Charlie, because Charlie had never been defined. All he'd ever been was a baseball card collection and a string-ball of unrealized potentials, cut and scattered by a .22 bullet that shouldn't have been in the same drawer as the gun. 

The loss of those infinite possibilities hurt worse than almost anything. 

Big realizations crept up on you rather than you reaching them. He'd thought that Daniel's fixation on one thing and one thing only was childish. There was certainly a tendency for geniuses to be that way, as if so much talent concentrated in one area had to leave others below average- and Jack knew that beneath the man who reheated his coffee until it boiled down to roadworks material, and then drank it without noticing, was someone sharp enough to work out an alien tongue that had diverged from Earth's languages millennia ago. The rest of the team took it for granted, as if all linguists came equipped with an universal translator, but Jack had some idea of what that took. 

But no. That wasn't childish. Singlemindedness was, if anything, one of the traits of a soldier. True, you had to be aware of what was going on around you- but you also had to be ready to discount it. 'Pay it attention, but not mind,' a sergeant had said to him once. 

Daniel wasn't the boy who never grew up. He wasn't quite an adult yet, either, but the boy on the verge, showing glimpses of a strength not too far in the future. Like the stories he'd used to read to Charlie. Winnie the Pooh. Just every now and then you got the sense that Christopher Robin was growing up, slowly drawing away from the Hundred-Acre Wood. That's why he liked the older English children's books- Milne and Lewis, etc. They weren't afraid to acknowledge that childhood ended. They even saw it as a good thing. And it would have been a good thing for Charlie. 

It made them so real it hurt. 

Something dropped away from his chest. That was it, then. 

Daniel was still writing, hunching closer and closer to the fire as the logs burned down and the desert night came on. Jack took a chair across from him. 

'You know,' he said, 'if the outer chambers had been unstable too, you could have set off a total collapse.' 

'I know,' Daniel said. 'But at some point you have to weigh the risks and go ahead anyway. Just like I did with coming here. Just like you do every time you make a decision that could kill you.' 

There was a silence. 

'Git,' Jack said. 

Daniel half-grinned. 

'I don't suppose they have teddy-bears on this world?' 

'Depends on how broad your definition of bear is,' Daniel said. 'Are you going to be pedantic about the number of limbs?' He paused. 'Why do you want a teddy-bear?' 

'A little exorcism,' Jack said. 'Don't worry. I think I've got a handle on it. No more pith hats.' 

'I'd say it's a little late to start protecting your head now.' 

They leaned back companionably. 'Silly old bear,' Jack said to himself, quietly. 

 


End file.
